NYAF 2008 Anime Blogging Panel
(By the way, this is the kind of blogging panel I want to see. Especially now that I’ve seen it done once, I can add my own improvements if I ever get a chance to run my own. Anyways, onward with the show. I know Anime Diet has a video of the panel, but an omo-style transcript does the job in a different way…)
Time: ~30 minutes past noon, September 27, 2008.
Place: The panel room all the way near the back (”Anime Fandom Panel Room”), NYAF 2008 at the Javits Center, NYC.
Panelists: Hinano, jpmeyer, DS
(My comments in italics, questions in bold.)
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Saturday morning was light and the rain has tapered off somewhat. I got to the con right when things are starting to get big and there was already a bigger crowd there than there was any time on Friday. It turned out that there weren’t a lot to do for me until the panel, so I got to the panel room early with Moy and watched some anime from his laptop.
In retrospect that was fun, but I should’ve taken the time to say hello to the many bloggers present. Ah well. Definitely sort of fail for me at NYAF this year as far as meeting new people goes, even if I did meet a few. One thing I noticed is that while we tend to be a fierce bunch on the intarwebs, most bloggers are the more reserved types in real life.
Because the panel before this one ended early(?) or something, people were trickling in well before the scheduled time. It was a quiet crowd compared to the musical performance going on outside.
Anna, NyaChan and Mike joined us as the time approaches 12:30. There were others but you gotta show your face and send me a twitter or comment on my blog or something! D: Alas, I just don’t remember you all.
Mike and his camera friend are set, and the clock hits 12:30. It begins.
jpmeyer [JP]: Ok we’re going to start. This is the Anime Blogging Panel.
A powerpoint went with this presentation. [I won’t be typing that down. If you really want to see it you can probably ask JP or Hinano, or grab it from the Anime Diet video.]
JP: I am myself, jpmeyer.
Hinano [H]: And I am Hinano.
DS: I’m Dan.
JP: But you can call him DANGO.
Groan.
JP: OK, we’re going to be talking about “anime blogging.” How you can start one, what to do, what to avoid. Then we’re going to do a long QA session.
DS: Any of you already have blogs? Who has a blog already?
The room was mostly empty but we saw a few hands out of the several dozen people in it.
Hinano and JP continued to do the “intro to blogging” bit by listing some free hosting sites to use. Blogger got singled out because of its google integration and community. Wordpress.com got a mention because it’s easy to move out to your own hosting. Animeblogger also got a nod because DS used it, and its technical flexibility, support, and freedom. Despite that it had no money.
Places to avoid–LJ, because RSS is not very well-integrated and it doesn’t let you embed HTML very well. Also avoid Japanese host sites because Hinano’s poor experience at yaplog. Avoid Facebook and MySpace due to spam and privacy issues.
Next, JP dealt with the types of anime blogs. There are a wide variety of anime blogs and people do all different kinds of things. Hinano explained her blog that how it used to do episode summaries and now it’s mixed with editorial and video game stuff. JP tried summaries but he didn’t like it and rather makes fun of anime in an editorial style. He also now posts news based on his own niche. DS said you can really blog whatever you want, but if you do an episodic format you always have something to write. JP added that you still have to add something new or original about the show if you do an episodic review.
On how to expose your blog, it seemed that aggregators are the way to go such as animenano and AB antenna. JP and DS gave a nod to collaborative blogging by cross-posting and cross-linking with each other, such as the ABC and the female blogger initiative. JP talked about organic growth from there, from active commenting, linking and trackbacks. JP also talked about search engine visitors and their high bounce rates (ie. “naruto porn” key word search).
Comments. Some open it, some mod it, some don’t bother at all. Spam can be a problem but moderated comments can be problematic for low-maintenance bloggers. There’s also the user experience to consider. DS talked about how comments supports the blogger and how there’s a feedback cycle. It’s also hard to figure out what kind of posts will get a lot of comments. Hinano drew some laughs with her Shugo Chara woes. JP also talked about retards on the internet and how a search engine reader made a flaming comment at a 2-year-old comment, and a week later came back and put it down again because there was no reply. Lulz.
Ex-fansuberr Hitorigoto [sic]. Ooops.
The slide now showed the blog URL for DS, Hinano and JP.
Q&A.
Q1: Linking–do you need to ask permission to link? Write to the person you link to?
JP: I think you can just link. For blogging you can do this; a lot of blogging software will send a “link” [ping] to the blog you linked. Technorati will note this, and generally people want links because it gives them “google points” and stuff.
JP: But don’t hotlink! At best someone gets angry, at worse you get a naughty image redirect.
Q2: What are some good hosting?
H: Don’t use Dreamhost.
JP: Also use ones that have cpanel one-click installs. It’s much easier. Doing it manually can be tricky for people not used to it. I don’t recommend Dreamhost somewhat although it’s fine. I somewhat recommends Bluehost but there may be some MySQL performance issues.
H: Dreamhost is bad!
DS: I’m on Bluehost too.
JP: A lot of these plans give you way more bandwidth and space than you need. So that is another a factor.
Q3: Do you censor or delete comments?
JP: Only when it’s spam or a duplicate. Some others delete hateful, racist or unreadable comments.
H: I delete “where can I download this?”
JP: Yeah, that’s another one–first you really shouldn’t tell people this, two it’s really easy to find out.
DS: Please comment on my blog.
LOL.
JP: I let stupid comments slide too because it’s a good laugh. If there are trolls, it’s easier to lock comments rather than just to delete it, to contain the mess.
Q4: Streaming videos–is linking to it or download sites something bad to do?
H: It’s just a problem with search engine visitors. Regular readers wouldn’t ask you where to find the stuff.
JP: It’s usually when the person googles something like “naruto streaming video” or something, and the blog contains URL name with those terms and the blog post contains mentions of the video even if it’s not about where to download it. The person then might leave a comment about where to get the video even if it’s not what you’re talking about.
Q5: How about linking to your own fan works?
JP: Yeah, if it’s just an AMV or something, sure.
H: Yea, I did that back when I was making AMVs.
JP: It’s your blog you can do whatever you want. Usually people would post the material at an appropriate place and link to it from their blog, like fanart on a DeviantArt page. As long as it’s related somewhat to the blog. Even if it is not really related at all, people don’t mind seeing it as long as it’s once in a while.
H: But not if you talk about irrelevant personal stuff like that everyday.
JP: Yea, it’s a blog about a topic. Use LJ or Twitter or something for other stuff.
DS: Yea, people usually have a variety of things for this, like Facebook, Twitter or MyAnimeList.
JP: You could also just host different installs of wordpress on your own domain.
Q6: How about anime-based microblogging?
H: Like Twitter?
Q6: Yea sort of.
JP: I think it’s hard for Twitter because of the 140-character limit. Good for news though. It can give your reader an idea how your anime watching goes, but you can’t “blog” blog.
H: You can use the MyAnimeList’s blogging feature.
DS: Yea, MAL is a good place for microblogging, to make a few comments about what you’re watching.
Q7: How about introducing a new blogger on your blog or joining another blog? Any experience to share?
DS: There are team blogs out there. Usually one person is in charge and there’s a bunch of people. Some team blogs have people in different countries. Different blogs handle it differently. Some do it one person per show…
JP: It can be tough to start a new team blog. However if it is you and your RL friends, then it’s easier and you can interact. There’s no worries about people who drop off the face of the earth.
DS: There are also popular bloggers that recruit a team to help out when they are overloaded.
JP: Getting a long-time commenter to join the team is great too because you know they will keep on producing content and they are familiar with the blog.
Q8: Search Engine Optimization?
JP: I don’t focus on this, but wordpress plugins can help.
H: Tags! That helps a lot for searches now too.
JP: Doing your URL in different ways can help search too, if you put the title in the URL.
Q9: Benefits of blogging versus a forum?
JP: It’s yours!
H: You get a readership. In a forum you can get lost when people are just spamming, but on a blog you can showcase your idea. (insert shugo chara forum example)
DS: It’s nice to have your own place. You control every part of it; look and feel. You also dictate its fate.
JP: Maybe if you have your own forum or your own thread that you can mod, then it’s like that.
Q10: Pangya!
H: That’s next year.
That was NyaChan.
JP: Maybe we can have an Asian cute RPG panel next year.
Q11: Any tips to pwn Danny Choo?
JP: It is impossible. There are no tips. It is impossible to pwn Danny Choo’s blog. Danny Choo is like, the King of the Internets. Not to be confused with the end boss of the Internets, which is Anonymous.
DS: Whenever I see a stormtrooper now, I think “is it Danny Choo?” when it’s obviously not.
JP and Hinano apologizes for forgetting to bring their prizes, which were Hinano’s prints. The prints were featured in the slides.
Q12: The art of flaming?
JP: The key is to not go overboard. Need to know how to get under his or her skin. This way they won’t just ignore you. There’s a psychology involved.
H: Or you can be like Ani-nouto, and flame people and close your comments.
JP: Yea that really angers people.
DS: Then they have to answer it on their own blog if they want to answer you.
Q13: What happen if 4chan invades?
JP: Lock comments or wait till it blows over. Don’t do anything against them or they’ll keep at it. Clean up after they leave.
DS14: How about ways to avoid burning out if you’ve been blogging for a while?
JP: I think it is the easiest to burn out right at the beginning, like after the first month. For established bloggers, the interest level is kinda cyclical because you can have a boring season and an interesting season. Or in my case there’s the election which occupies all my thoughts right now, but I’ll go back to posting more once that’s over.
DS: He posts because she makes him post.
JP: Yea, it works for a bit but when the mojo comes back I’ll do it.
H: It’s hard to post episodic reviews when a show that gets worse and worse progressively like Zero no Tsukaima. And you can burn out on that.
Q15: Does blogging about the show change how you look at it? And vice versa?
JP: Sometimes. I’d like a show and blog about it, but if it goes bad then I’ll blog less. For shows I don’t blog I might not pay as much attention to.
H: It’s hard. The blogging keeps me watching a show. Sometimes it keeps me going when I would’ve dropped it.
JP: Sometimes I just like a show and then I pour out on a blog once I’m all done with it, like LoGH.
DS: If you do something funny every week, that’s how I work. I can’t do it just one episode at a time, but when it’s all done.
JP: I just make fun of an episode all by itself.
H: I do blog first episodes.
Q16: Do game and anime blogs overlap?
H: Yea, that’s mine.
JP: Sometimes you get blogs talking about the game an anime is based on or a game that’s a spinoff, but not too much game reviews in general. Rarely.
DS: There’s a lot you can do…draw a mascot, write about dangos.
Q17: How long does it take for you to draw one of your strips?
DS: Not too long. I cut and paste and all, just whatever to get the idea across.
JP: When your art level is XKCD it takes less time than, say, Megatokyo.
DS: The dangos are really easy to draw…
Q18: Recommendations for writing styles?
JP: I have my influences…
H: Just do what you like.
JP: Yeah, Onion, AVclub kind of influences. I don’t write argumentative posts because of my academic influences.
DS: One way to look at it is that the essence of blogging is of the moment, that you want to capture your reaction to something you just saw or a news bite. But not everyone does it that way. Some people do drafts and write a paper and stuff, like one of those collective blog effort. They write a thought-out piece. One person even wanted to use it as a writing sample.
JP: Which you should not do! My academic advisor told everyone to not include any blog stuff in your PHD application. And everyone looked at me and laughed.
Q19: Do you see any fanfiction on blogs?
H: Ohohoho. Besides Shino’s Paachi and his blog…
JP: Not too often; fan fiction or fan art does better on sites that are focused on those, and then the blog links to it. This way people find the stuff.
H: Also on LJ. There are LJ communities for this.
Q20: Podcast ever again?
JP: Maaaybe.
H: No.
JP: Maaybe.
H: No.
JP: No.
JP: I’d like to be on one, but we live in a studio apartment and you can hear golf gaming in the background. And it’s weird that I’m talking into the mic when she’s playing.
And that’s all folks! DS joked that we can blog about this panel. LULZ.
I’ve linked to this transcript on my post. Thanks.
Thanks, I was wondering what some of the questions were, since I couldn’t hear most of them!
I think Mike’s video is mostly good if you crank the volume up during the questions part.
Oh, I’m gonna link to it too!
And cute dangos, btw!
The HD version (and subsequent future revisions) will have the questions subtitled. It’s something I should have done in the first place. Omo’s transcript has just made that job much, much easier!
Where are the racy questions? Like “JP, what is your stand on tsundere Russians?” or erm something more x-rated.
Hey, was it really an empty room? How did an empty room generate 18 questions?
Empty room is curious, I guess. No, seriously though, there were a good 20+ people at the panel.
And yeah, racy question. I guess I fail at asking racy questions. Probably because despite how loli Hinano looks, she is quite fierce. I guess that’s how your average kugirie loli goes anyways.